Netbook Network

Sometimes when you plug a device into your computer, you see the “Driver installed” tooltip, but you get no autoplay window and it doesn’t seem to exist in the My Computer window. It happens due to the fact that Windows seems to have encountered an issue when assigning it a drive letter. This tends to happen when things like card readers are plugged in, but don’t have cards to read. Then, the card reader itself has no memory, but it still considered a drive, so in some cases, Windows won’t know what to do with your newly plugged in drive. There’s a very simple fix to this, and it’s a matter of manually selecting a drive letter – the process only takes a few clicks.

1. Go to “My Computer”, right click, and hit “Manage”. For most Windows users, “My Computer” or simply “Computer” should sit in your start menu. That will also work for this step.
2. You’ll be presented with a “Computer Management” window. Open the “Storage” selection and proceed to open “Disk Management”.
3. You’ll be presented with a list of drives and various properties of each. Right click on the device that’s not showing up and hit something that looks like “Change drive letter and paths”.
4. If you see a dropdown menu, pick a letter that you want to assign the drive. The dropdown menu should consist of an alphabet, each letter capitalized. If not, there should be a button that says “Change” while the drive is selected – press that, and you should see the dropdown menu. When you’re done, press “Ok”.

You’re set! Chances are, you’ll see an Autoplay window pop up, and your drive should be in the My Computer pane.